


The Honeyed Dead

by WaltzQueen



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, The Astral Plane, the line of succession for dieties that cant die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaltzQueen/pseuds/WaltzQueen
Summary: A Queen and her hive are together forever.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	The Honeyed Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Killed America's Favorite Wizard](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636323) by [Cactus_Lesbian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactus_Lesbian/pseuds/Cactus_Lesbian). 



> This was inspired by https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636323 who gave me cause to imagine how and what it looks like to pass the Astral Plane to another God.

To begin, imagine a honeycomb.

At the center lies a queen bee, while, for the purpose of the analogy, around her are all her works, all the honey they've made, all the larvae they've spawned. Each are packaged neatly in their tiny waxen hexagons, fast asleep. Imagine that queen bee has once had a daughter, as queen bees do. Or you may imagine she had an usurper, as may be the case. Only instead of gathering a chunk of the hive to split off, their journey was stymied by the simple fact that there was no where to go. The hive was all that there was and the only place they could ever be. Imagine, if you find yourself capable, that whether by force or by willful concession for the sake of the whole, that the Queen of the Hive lay down at the center of her sprawling network of carefully regimented divisions and went to sleep as her successor built over her, entombing her in the foundation of a new hive.

For as long as there has been life, there has been the end of life. And there has been the Dead for just as long. The Astral Place is the Plane of the Dead. Whether a temporary pit stop for those on the oroborous road of reincarnation or a Final resting place, it has belonged to the dead and will belong to the dead even far after the last drop of life has eked from the vein of the universe.

With sapience and intelligence came opinions and arguments and simply unwillingness to behave a certain way. Like bitter children seeking a place of their own the Dead sought to break away from the Dead to no avail. With no place to go besides the Astral Plane it became the end of battles and the beginning of battles.

Layers and Layers of Gods still sleep in mounds upon expanding mounds of sheets of honeycombs, their reigning Queens nestled amidst their carefully tended children. Queens of madness twitch fretfully in their slumber, surrounded by those they shepherded towards frenzy and anguish. Queens of quiet solemnity lay stiller than the graves they tended during their reign. The industrious and intelligent and clever still buzz, still calculate, still devise as they rest. Even long silenced, for all are dead and none are ever truly gone, the humming of the hives that once were can be felt. They are the archstone of the Astral Plane.

The Raven Queen can still fear the whirling madness of Orcus. It shakes the metaphorical ground beneath her feet even as she sits upon the throne she wrested from him long ago. As though the line of succession was a tangible thing, made of the glass it resembled more than any God of the Dead liked to admit, the Raven Queen suspects that she can look down and see a history of Death beneath her stretching down to the beginnings of time. If she raises her throne higher off the 'ground' to gain an imperceptible, immaterial distance then she keeps her own council on the matter.

Still, as she looks over her ideal Astral Plane, souls at rest, rabble-rousers stoppered in a box shaped bottle on an island to prevent contamination, she thinks that a good foundation is imperative to building a superior successor. Her avian eyes reflect the sapphire hues of the Astral Sea. The tiny , intricate matrices of connections of emotions and deeds and stray wayward thoughts, generate tides that wave out at her, a genteel bow for their ruler. The susurrus of water-that-isn't-water serves as a lullaby, to soothe the Dead in their rest.

"How nice it must be," she finds herself thinking. Longing is a thing she has forgotten. Once she longed to supplant Orcus and succeeded. Now she longs for the ideal she has created for all Her Dead. Though she has forgotten the shape of longing it has not forgotten her. One day it will overtake her and she will submit to the same gentle rest she has given to others. Looking back on it, this will be the moment the Raven Queen began to prepare her own honeycomb tomb in the center of her layer of the ever expanding hive of the dead. For now, she simply turns her gaze inward to once more verify the solidity of the Pax Mortis she has established and to ignore the Queens of Hives past beneath her.

**Author's Note:**

> The Raven Queen overthrew Orcus to become the new ruler of the astral plane. If this can happen once, it can happen more than once and probably has. But not all past Gods are rabid things to be put down or chained up, some of them must have peacefully handed it off for the better of all the dead.


End file.
